By Cassidy Bohan
On Tuesday, Facebook announced an update to the Ads Manager that makes it easier for advertisers to track performance against their specific goals and ROI. Advertisers are now able to identify marketing goals for their campaign, whether it be to increase app installs, new fans or interactions, and track the specific user actions that drive that goal. The “Total Actions” column is now broken apart so that advertisers can track results through app installs, link clicks and offer claims.

Facebook is rolling out the update which will be made available to all advertisers in the coming few weeks.

What Changed:

Increased Focus on Advertising Goals: With the ad create tool, advertisers can now choose from the list of advertising goals and let the Ads Manager adjust the campaign summary page to highlight the actions they care about most.

For example, if the advertising goal is to get more page likes, the campaign summary page will now show “Page Likes” more prominently and it will calculate “Cost per Page Like.”

Clear measurements of ROI: Marketers using conversion tracking with their ads will now able to track conversions, and Ad Manager will highlight the “Cost per Conversation” for each ad. Marketers are also able to assign a value to each conversion in the tracking pixel and see the “Conversion Value” of each ad.

Simplified Reach Metrics: Social reach has been removed from the campaign summary. Advertisers can now easily compare a campaign’s reach with potential reach in order to get a sense of how many people the campaigned reached versus how many people were targeted.

Analysis of Completed Campaigns: Advertisers can see data from the last 28 days during which a campaign was active in order to better compare overall performance of their completed campaigns.

Our Recommendations:

Establish One Advertising Goal: Set one goal for each campaign to get the best use out of the metrics available and track performance accurately.

Monitor Reach: By watching ad reach, campaign reach and potential reach, advertisers will be able to see if they are reaching enough people and adjust targeting, budgets and bids accordingly.

Compare Performance of Ads With the Same Goal: Optimize ad strategy by watching which ads are aiding your goal the most.

Utilize the Actions by Impression Time Report: See how people interact with ads over time in order to understand which ads drive immediate action vs. latent action.

What do you think of Facebook's updates to its ad manager? Share in the comments below!